Bayou Vista district changes in new School Board map

CENTERVILLE — The St. Mary Parish School Board on Thursday adopted a new map based on the 2020 Cen-sus to define the districts each member will represent after this fall’s elections.

With one large exception, the districts generally follow the map in force since the 2010 Census. That exception is that District III, represented by current board President Kenny Alfred, is more compact, centering on Bayou Vista.

In four of the 11 School Board districts, a majority of the population over 18 will be African American, the same number as in the 2010 map. Blacks make up about 30% of the parish’s voting-age population.

The map approved Thursday was developed by Mike Hefner of Geographic Planning and Demographic Services of Duson, hired as a consultant.

This year’s remapping had to take into account a 9.6% decrease in the parish’s population 2010-20.

The parish population figure that resulted from the 2020 Census, 49,406, undercounts the parish’s population, Hefner said. The decennial count was slowed by the COVID pandemic, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Trump administration to cut off the counting Oct. 15 rather than ask Congress for an exemption.

Even with the difficulties, the map passed by the board Thursday generally has “nice, clear natural boundaries that separate your districts,” Hefner said.

District III, where the biggest change occurred, currently sprawls from Baldwin along the parish’s northeast border and into Bayou Vista.

To create the more compact Bayou Vista-centered version in the new map, a section containing about 289 people, mostly mobile home residents in the Burchfield Lane area near Berwick’s Country Club Estates, was moved from the largely Berwick District VIII now represented by Michael Taylor. Those people will now be part of District III.

That generated the only public objection to the map at a public hearing before the School Board meeting.

Scott Babin, who plans to run for the School Board from District VIII, said those residents have long been part of Berwick-based District VIII.

Neither Alfred nor Taylor objected Thursday to the placement of the Burchfield-area residents into District III.

The map approved Thursday will be submitted to the state government to ensure that it doesn’t violate state law, including a limit on the number of precincts that can be split between districts, Hefner said in an email Friday.

The School Board will be looking for approval before qualifying for the Nov. 8 elections begins July 20.

For the first time since Congress enacted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the School Board won’t have to submit voting district changes for prior approval from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The act initially required all local governments in Louisiana and five other southern states, and in isolated portions of other states, to seek “preclearance” for voting law changes to make sure minority voting rights were being protected in areas with a history of voter suppression.

The preclearance requirement targeted jurisdictions where a “test or device” had been used to disenfranchise minorities, including literacy tests and requirements that an already registered voter must vouch for any prospective voter. The formula was also based on low voter turnout in some jurisdictions as of November 1964.

As time went by and the low-turnout date was advanced, jurisdictions in states from Alaska to New Hampshire became subject to the preclearance rules.

Then, in the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the requirement exceeded the federal government’s constitutional authority and that the formula was based on outdated effects.

Voting Rights Act provisions protecting minority voting rights remain in force, but they must be defended in court rather than protected in advance by the preclearance requirement.

At one point this story incorrectly referred to the Berwick district's number. It is actually District VIII and has been corrected.